Latest Windows 10 update now deemed good enough for business users

Yesterday’s Patch Tuesday pushed the latest major

update over the edge.

Corporate users should now be unafraid to roll out the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, aka Version 1803, to their fleets, according to Microsoft.

Over the course of Windows 10’s life, the precise terminology that Microsoft uses to denote this has changed. Originally, there was a split between the “Current Build”—the latest stable update with the latest monthly patch—and the “Current Build for Business.” This latter label was used to denote the version that Microsoft felt was sufficiently tested and stabilized as to be suitable to roll out to conservative corporate fleets. While the Current Build would be updated to each new major update as soon as it was released, the Current Build for Business typically lagged by a few months.

The terminology has now changed a bit: what was once “Current Build” is now “Semi-Annual Channel (targeted),” and “Current Build for Business” is now “Semi-Annual Channel.” But the effect is the same: as of yesterday’s patch, which brings Windows 10’s build number up to 17134.165, Version 1803 is now blessed with the Semi-Annual Channel label.

The new naming is meant to be indicative of how corporations should treat new Windows 10 updates: the “targeted” release should be rolled out to a limited set of early adopters for validation and testing, with the non-targeted release suitable for wider deployment.